The Oculus, World Trade Center, next to the Freedom Tower. The Oculus structure, said to resemble a bird or a dinosaur, symbolizes rebirth from the ashes. In her book, Kathleen Dean Moore writes that we are shutting down the Cenozoic era. What will arise in its place?

This is the scary, provocative, grieving, truthful, and energizing book to read if you want to come to grips with climate change and decide what, if anything, you are going to do about it.

Great Tide Rising is not filled with climate science and facts about global warming and how to “solve” it with know-how and technology. In her book, Kathleen Dean Moore, an acclaimed nature essayist, philosopher, and environmental leader, frames climate change and habitat destruction as moral and ethical questions, guiding readers toward possible answers. Two of the gravest moral questions we face are:

Why is it wrong to wreck the world?

What is our obligation to our children, our children’s children, and the future?

Moore writes:

“I object…to the language of the sixth extinction and will not use it. The current extinction is something morally different from the first five. For all their horror, for all their calamitous power, the early extinctions were natural Earth processes, what the insurance industry calls ‘acts of God,’ beyond human control or culpability. This current great wave of dying is the direct result of human decisions, knowing and intentional, or willfully and wantonly reckless. That’s a difference of moral significance. It changes a calamity into a cosmic crime, a perversion of human power….To call this just the sixth in a long series of extinction cycles is what philosophers call a ‘category mistake’; it’s not the same thing. Extinctions one through five call us to awe. Number six calls us to rage – rage against the dying.”

For me, Great Tide Rising is a kind of primer, or bible, for our time. A bible in the sense that it contains Moore’s eloquent, clarifying language, as well as the wisdom of our greatest environmental prophets, including Aldo Leopold,Edward Abbey,Joanna Macy, and even the poet Mary Oliver.

A bible, too, because it urges us to bear witness to that which must change, and then to act. By “act,” Moore does not mean switching to eco-friendly light bulbs; she means for us to seek a larger purpose and vision for our lives in light of the disaster we face. Great Tide Rising is a kind of bible because it can be turned to often for wisdom and guidance as we head into a treacherous future.

“It’s a… stunning thing that we face climatic changes that will undermine the lives of our children – and very few people are talking about it….most likely it’s a variety of what American intellectual Lewis Mumford called a ‘magnificent bribe.’ The bargain is that each member of the community may claim every material advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus he may desire, in quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority: food, housing, swift transportation, instantaneous communication, medical care, entertainment, education’ – on the condition, I would say, that they never ask where it came from, or at what cost in human suffering, at what cost to the future, or to what long-term effect. That’s the deal: If they ask, they have to turn away from their glittering lives.”

Great Tide Rising refers not just to sea level rise, but to the growing groundswell of people questioning our way of life and committed to a profound shift in thinking. Joanna Macy calls this The Great Turning. In Macy’s words:

“The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization…A revolution is under way because people are realizing that our needs can be met without destroying our world….Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning. It is happening now.”

Macy, Kathleen Dean Moore, and other environmental leaders do not know if humans and other life forms will survive what is to come, even if we take massive action. The deal is, we are to bear witness and act regardless of the outcome.

For Great Tide Rising, Moore interviewed Mary Evelyn Tucker, a professor at Yale Divinity School and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, who spoke of the human instinct to create. Her words compose one of the most beautiful and hopeful passages in the book:

“Humans desire, more than anything else, to be creative, and we desire to participate in the creative processes, in the future and in life – that’s what having children is about. But we can be life-generating in a variety of ways – creative, participatory, oriented toward something larger than ourselves….

Our work is to align ourselves with evolutionary processes instead of standing in their way or derailing them. So our human role is to deepen our consciousness in resonance with the fourteen-billion-year creative event in which we find ourselves. Our challenge is to construct livable cities and to cultivate healthy foods in ways congruent with Earth’s patterns. We need the variety of ecological understanding so we can align ourselves with the creative forces of the universe.

Something is changing; an era is changing. If we are shutting down the Cenozoic era…the great work is to imagine how the new era can unfold. Our work in the world is not just a stopgap to extinction….We are part of the Great Work, as Thomas Berry would say, of laying the foundation of a new cultural era.”

I have only touched on highlights of Great Tide Rising. There is so much more, including a special appeal for grandparents to act on behalf of their grandchildren and future generations.

Times Square and a mantra for our time, maybe one that needs to change. I brought Great Tide Rising on a trip to New York City last week and read it in the evenings. I visited the photography studio where my son works and, walking around Manhattan, I saw many promo posters for The Americans (a favorite series) with photos taken by Pari, my son’s employer. This is why I will always love great cities, especially New York, where I once lived: they nurture and embody the human desire to be creative that Mary Evelyn Tucker speaks of in Great Tide Rising.

I found this stunning High Victorian Gothic library in the West Village. Jefferson Market Library, part of the New York Public Library System, was once a women’s prison. It is now a quiet, beautiful city space. Perhaps cities will save us. Some environmentalists predict that more people will live in cities, leaving vast tracts of nature to heal and regenerate.

The library is tucked in alongside Jefferson Market Park. I enjoy seeking out small secret gardens in urban places. When Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York, thousands of acres of parkland were added, nearly 2000 parks were redesigned or upgraded, and a million trees were planted.

A view from the High Line, a repurposed elevated rail line nearly two miles long on the lower West Side. An enchanting garden, especially at dusk, that did not exist when I lived in New York. My son and I walked the High Line, between Tenth and Twelfth avenues, on the way to dinner. Green spaces like this one could be part of the future livable city Mary Evelyn Tucker speaks of in Great Tide Rising.

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